Breath
by MarinersRevenge
Summary: [waterlogged paper crane] … If I could be one thing I would be the breath in your lungs. I would fill all the places I wished I could touch. Would you let me?


**Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling.**

* * *

I. You come and then you leave

She remembers him.

He was beautiful.

And he was looking at her!

Silver blonde hair and pale skin.

Those grey eyes.

She had never seen anything quite like it before.

She clutched her book closer to her chest and her heart seized.

She remembers hoping that she can introduce herself to him at some point when the din of the train station dies down.

She hoped that he would be her friend.

Maybe they could talk about books or study magic together!

Later in the safety of her dorm, hidden from her roommates, she cries.

He had hissed horrid words and his face contorted into something else.

She knows now he's not beautiful but ugly like his words!

Like his soul!

This will be the last time she ever thinks of him!

He is vile and cruel and, and- !

II. Like seasons in my heart

She can't believe it.

The staff had the audacity to pair her with HIM of all people.

They shared many courses together.

They also seemed to share a voracious hunger for books.

Still!

Whether or not that was a good thing remained to be seen.

He would be lazy and self-centered and a million other things.

And they would never finish anything on time!

His mutterings surprised a laugh from her and if she wasn't acutely aware it was him slouched beside her she would have thought it was a friend.

His face slackened for just a moment at the sound of her laugh and she hid her face with her hair.

Later in class she finally looks at him and her breath hitches slightly.

Sparkling grey eyes and tinged cheeks.

That night she looks at the sky and thinks of him.

The glass around her heart cracks infinitesimally and she let's it.

III. Believe me, it's a shame

She tries not to look at him.

He is forbidden to her.

But every time he enters a room, her gaze slides to him.

She's tried.

Oh, how she has tried.

To ignore him.

To stop cataloguing every gesture.

Every facial expression.

His laugh.

His scent.

Stop it!

He's vile and cruel and not worth it.

She repeats it like lullaby.

It's too bad that her heart is too old for lullabies.

IV. Her hands are not the same

"Gross, what do they see in him?"

[He's found someone.]

[He's found someone to warm his bed.]

[journal entry] … I hate him… but I love him. Or at least I think I do? _Ah! Ne puis-je savoir si j'aime ou si je hais?_

"I don't know. Maybe he pays them?"

[waterlogged paper crane] … If I could be one thing I would be the breath in your lungs. I would fill all the places I wished I could touch. Would you let me?

"Haha! Oh! Maybe he blackmails them-"

[Does he think of her? Does he see her face when he touches them? Does he think of her when he touches him-]

[She does.]

[She has past the point of shame]

[...she'll do it again…]

V. Let's face it all for once

Her heart shattered that day in the cool summer night.

She didn't know why she cared so much.

She felt every piece as they sunk deeper into her flesh.

Blood was sure to have coated her lips.

She imagined blood covering her hands as well.

Maybe we'll be a matched pair?

Time away from school dimmed him.

He was no longer the focus of her world.

She focuses on what she knows.

It certainly wasn't him.

At least she's sure.

Another's attention makes her feel giddy.

[Nauseous]

It's fine.

She's fine

She doesn't need him.

She doesn't need anyone.

But then he's there.

One night of horror later.

He's there.

And she hates herself for the relief she feels at seeing him.

When she wakes she imagines him.

His grey eyes haunting her.

Her friends help her down the stairs and that's when she sees it.

He's there again in a too small cabin filled with others.

He looks out of place.

A lord among his serfs.

She wonders if she is hallucinating.

Maybe that thing that carved into her broke off a piece of her mind.

Maybe she chewed on it like a wad of gum.

The image is too much to process.

She giggles and her friends stare at her in concern.

He turns his gaze on her and she knows then that he's very real.

Her laughter chokes in her throat like flowers and she runs up the stairs.

She's...

Fine.

VI. I don't believe in love

Maybe it was because she had idolized romance that when confronted with it in all its terrible glory she was unprepared.

Half of her youth she spent running back and forth between life and death.

Maybe that was it as well?

She knows for certain she loves her friend.

He was there for her during the times went for terrible to horrific.

She's thankful for him and his family.

But she can't bring herself to say those words to him.

She can't tell him.

Part of her knows that if she did it would be hollow.

Empty pretty words.

In the night she dreams of him.

It's always cold and the stars look like frost on a lake.

He breathes out.

She breathes him in.

He fills her.

And she aches.

It's not fair

No, she can't tell him.

He's not the one she wants to tell.

VII. Tú que vienes a rondarme, amárrate a mí

She breathes in the cool night air.

She breathes in until it burns her lungs and she slowly releases it.

Has it really been two years since she last saw him?

He all but disappeared in the afters and she didn't care.

She didn't!

She was happy to see him go.

Yes, happy.

He had helped them and that was it.

She didn't want to see him.

She didn't want to think of him.

But her traitorous heart whispers and stutters and seizes each time she catches a flash of silver hair.

It's not him, her mind whispers.

Yes, but it could have been, her heart says back.

Surprisingly her friend, her brother she would die for and almost did, corners her.

She stared into his green eyes and her heart's hastily constructed shield crumbles.

She confesses everything.

Almost everything.

Some things are to [sacred] to confess.

He understands.

At least he thinks he does.

But he trusts her and in the end that's all that mattered.

So here she stands.

The pathway to his home stretched out in front of her daunting and unknown.

Her mind and heart are for once in agreement.

She will wait as long as needed.

[A call]

He opens the door.

[Breath in lungs full of him and his full of her and she aches aches-]

And she smiles.

* * *

**_You come and then you leave_**

**_Like seasons in my heart_**

**_Believe me, it's a shame_**

**_Her hands are not the same_**

**_Let's face it once for all_**

**_I don't believe in love_**

**_I don't believe in love_**

**_\- GINERVA, Forest_**

**_"_****_Ah! Ne puis-je savoir si j'aime ou si je hais?"_**

**_"_****_Alas, am I incapable to know whether I love, whether I hate?"_**

**_\- Hermione_**

**_Act V, scene 1, verse 4 of Andromaque, 1667_**

**_Andromaque_****_is a tragedy in 5 acts written around 1667 by French playwright, Jean Racine, when he was about 27 years old. This play in particular established the author's reputation as one of the great playwrights in France. _**

**_"_****_Tú que vienes a rondarme, amárrate a mí" _**

**_\- Maria Arnal i Marcel Bagés, "Tú que vienes a rondarme"_**

**_Depending on the dialect of Spanish you speak this can translate to:_**

**_"_****_You who come to haunt me, tie yourself to me."_**

**_Or in Catalan:_**

**_"_****_You that comes around (rotates) me, love me"_**


End file.
